


One Life for None

by thunderousbreak



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (not explicitly but implied), Anxiety, Depression, Derek Hale Character Study, Derek Hale Deserves Nice Things, Derek Hale Needs a Hug, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Kinda, Mental Health Issues, Mentioned Kate Argent, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, Statutory Rape, The Hale Family, Trauma, Warning: Kate Argent, the Hale House Fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 15:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20819507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thunderousbreak/pseuds/thunderousbreak
Summary: After burying Laura's remains next to the echo of his childhood home, Derek finally confronts the past he left behind when they fled to New York and takes a tour of the Hale House. It is as heartbreaking as you think it is.





	One Life for None

**Author's Note:**

> for maximum pain listen to this instrumental whilst reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUZeSYsU0Uk
> 
> WARNING: kate and derek had a romantic and sexual relationship, this references that, cue the statutory rape tag. there is a brief reference to kate torturing derek. kate faked her identity to lure derek, so that too. the house fire isn't written out but referenced throughout. derek hurts himself by punching the wall to calm down.
> 
> if i have missed any tags/warning please let me know.

Perhaps Derek hadn’t chosen the right person.

Heart bleeding profusely on his sleeve, he collapsed into the embrace of the first woman who promised to heal it for him, stitch the wound and safely restore it to his chest. Older, experienced, clever in ways he never imagined people could be, it was so easy believing her cleverly orchestrated lies. 

His family had only warned him of the Argents and other hunters in the district, talking of a code which coiled around a wolfs head like a noose, and a substance which not even they could recover from. But lucky for him this woman wasn’t an Argent, far from one actually, she was Olivia Presscot. A substitute for Mrs Morell since his history teacher was ill. Human through and through; sweet as her fragranced perfume and unsuspecting of what lay beneath the skin in Derek's mouth.

Or so he had foolishly believed. 

In the performance of a lifetime, every actor adopts the persona of their character and plays that part until the finale. Then, critics rise and applaud them for their deliverance, an ode to their hard work. Kate’s performance had been trapping his family in the basement and setting them on fire, humans and wolves alike. 

There was no standing ovation. No bright lights and cheers. Just the sound of loss as his family’s scent erased and the inferno ascended to them from the fuel coating the ground. 

Standing before the derelict home, because it was and always would be home regardless of the horror, the marred flesh was painted black and smothered in dust, looking just as impressive as it had been all those years ago. Since his last visit the roof had crumbled, caved into his old room and scattered the dead embers across the floor. 

His feet climbing the structurally sound stairs and taking him to it, he released the tension spinning an angry web into his fingers. Violence wasn’t always the answer. Sometimes, to do nothing was to do all that needed to be done.

Yet, that didn’t extinguish the yearning to slam his fist into the walls and punish himself for ruining so many lives. In due time, what was meant for him would come whether he wanted it to or not. Kindness wasn’t scripted for his future, there was no need to rush the inevitable.

Fists buried in his jacket pockets, he entered. The room was empty. Scrapped of his bed, the paintings (because he _loved_ to paint), the beanbag and even the curtains, void of all he had been apart from the memories which lingered in the walls. A tree branch reached out to him from the gap in the ceiling, an offer of stability and companionship as he struggled to stare at the mess his chaos spurred; he wondered how Laura felt. 

Proffering her support and undying love when he came home, a sour stench clogging his pores after Kate had convinced him to show her just how much he loved her, and he hadn’t been able to say no. 

“Derek,” she would say, entering his room silently, emanating concern. “Is everything okay?”

And his wolf, desperate for the care that only a would be Alpha- a sister- pack, could provide, would whine and beg him to tell her everything. Purge the truth that stifled his veins and throat, clenching each brain nerve torment him with a memory he wished to forget. But having scrubbed his skin crimson in the bath and finally cocooned his body in a den, he’d shake his head. Swallow the hurt of Paige, of Olivia (_Kate_), of himself. 

“I’m fine. Just tired.”

He was always tired then. Exhausted from existence it seemed, because he never went out with friends or family or to any activities. But Laura never pried, only hugged him extra tightly whenever she could, and swayed their mothers concern when she voiced the change in her son, how he smelt sad and lonely and terrified. 

“It’s just school stress,” Laura would say, “he’ll be fine, ma.”

“He knows that we’re here for him, doesn’t he?” his mother would ask, showing desperation that only a parent could, never an Alpha. “We’ll always be here for him.”

Always was a misty day where the scent had been disrupted by the smell of the preserve. Always was mountain ash that circled the basement and entrance to underground tunnels. Always was until Kate doused Derek’s life with gasoline and flicked the fiery stick into his mouth, compelling him to swallow his betrayal. 

Looking away from the empty space where his bed used to lay, Derek inhaled sharply through his nose, unsurprised but still so disappointed to smell the leaves decaying around the house. The wet trees. The liquefying charcoal on the bones of his home. The misery that had tailed him from Beacon Hills, to New York, and all the way back to his hometown.

Leaving the room, he didn’t have a door to close behind him. 

On the top floor were several bedrooms which belonged not only to the wolves, but also the humans of the pack. An integral part of their family, his father and brother being one of them themselves. 

But Kate had no problem herding them like a flock of sheep and tossing them into the basement too, forcing the four walls to become a mass graveyard and crime scene. Stitching them by their skin into the stony timbers composing the den, forcing them onto their feet helpless to see the fire crawl to them with no escape- no way to escape the steel and wolfsbane infused chains.

God, no one was left. One by one they had perished in an uncontrollable conflagration and they were all gone. He was truly alone. Departure the world to move into a realm where their own son- brother- family, couldn’t hurt them.

It didn’t truly grasp him until that moment, eyes piercing through every crumbling piece of timber, the black drape cloaking the wood dripping as it stole the strength that lived on in the house. Out of them all, only he had survived, rendering him alone in a world desperate to torture the soul of his skin.

Desolation inundated the past and the present and the future, the house all Derek was and all he would be. He had deceived his family and coerced them into death’s path, letting the heavy touch of demise falter on their skin, extracting their souls from the dusted remains. 

“What’s left of the people? Please tell me we have something to bury.” Sheriff Stilinski had been at the scene since the call came five hours ago. They had only just managed to contain the unholy blaze. 

“The coroner said we’re lucky to find bones, even a shadow of them at this point. They’ve been stuck in there for a long time,” responded a deputy, grim as he watched the smoke curl in the air.

They did find bones. Disintegrated and chalky bones, fluttering away at the smallest expense of breeze, embedded in the wall where shackles dipped in wolfsbane had been holding them upright.

Once magnificent beings with power in their strut and strength in their defined muscles: now they had been stomped into dust, phoenix’s set ablaze. But the only problem was, there was no revival this time. His mother, father, family? Gone like the seasons, never to return in the same way ever again.

Eyes stopping on Talia’s room in his study of the floor, Derek wondered if he could go in there. Whether the murderer deserved to enter her place of bliss of safety. Nothing existed beyond the cinders of the fire and perhaps rainwater, but it had phantoms of a loving embrace and tender whispers of reassurances that he couldn’t completely believe then. Definitely not now. 

Swallowing, he stepped inside and let the agony wash over him as the longing amplified. There was no denying he had lost the right to be in such a sacred room, knowing that his mother and father had walked these exact steps once and never again. But he couldn’t help himself, he needed to do it or else he’d become one with the deceased.

The roof was considerably intact, keeping the tainted hands of the world outside, but there were leaks across the plain of the ceiling. Water dripping from every place possible. 

Staring at the discharge and recalling the vigorous showers, the disgust that wouldn’t leave, the hug of his mother which seemed confused but affectionate all the same, he felt searing hate storm inside him. How could he deserve anything akin to the protection of her grasp ever again?

Had Paige not coloured his eyes blue he was certain that the fire would have. Because Kate may have pulled the trigger, but Derek had given her the loaded gun. 

Inhaling deeply, trying to lock onto the scent which programmed him to feel somewhat alive, he only smelt fire, death, and his own despair. Scents which his person carried ever since he had run out of school and to the perserve, feeling the losses multiply and his wolf cry out in mourning. 

When he reached there, fire cascading over his body like a hot shroud, suffocating him the way that the mountain ash surrounding the building was choking them, he saw flames soar to the sky. From within the chambers below the house, heard the fire cackle. Above them in the black smoke, watched his life deteriorate. 

Just barely did he control his wolf. Just barely had they managed to pull him back- Laura grabbing onto him and forcing him back into the woods where he watched her become the new Alpha, eyes beaming red. She was too young, hadn’t finished her training or her lessons, but the title was thrust onto her regardless. 

Holding each other as they collapsed on the soiled leaves, mud staining their clothes as rail propelled from above and masked their cries, they did more than break down. They lost a huge segment of who they were, a part of themselves that could never be recovered. A black cloud congregated around them and they felt the final goodbyes of their life as they howled into the sky, ashen and dark as if the night had come early.

Stood in his parents’ room, his breaths a little harder to dispel, Derek tried to calm his erratic heart. Sprinting back to the house, because Laura was too dishevelled by the transition and onslaught of power that came with it, he sobbed as he urgently tried to pass the mountain ash so cleverly lining the perimeter of the home.

Tears were all he could shed. No apologies, no shouts, no nothing. Hopelessly, he stared at himself burn and couldn’t fight the Sheriff when he locked his arms around Derek once more and ushered him away, not questioning how Derek got there so soon or how he found out about the fire. Just held him as he cried into his jacket and clutched the zip knowing that he had ruined not only his own, but Laura and his family’s life.

They had always been the lungs of the home. Talia and Aaron Hale were the reason that they could breathe, the reason why the heart in the centre of the pack never stopped beating. But alas, nothing lasts forever, certainly not the lungs, and after ingesting too much black smoke they ceased like all the organs did. Passing into an existence Derek knew was kinder to them.

Exiting the room, his heart a lot more heavier than it was before and the grief smothering his chest, he barely composed the shudder when he felt a ghostly hand touch his shoulder. His father never pushed, didn’t try to get Derek to talk like his mother did, but he always told him he was there when he needed it. Feeling the squeeze which could thaw icebergs as great as skyscrapers, the promise that he was keeping even in death, Derek closed his eyes and sighed, stuttering a breath.

They must have known. Kate must have told them. She wouldn’t have passed up the moment to glorify how skilful she was in infiltrating the Hale family and then their home, using Derek like a pawn in the game and sacrificing him when the time came to it. They couldn’t have loved him after that, he knew that they couldn’t.

A traitor so gullible and naive like him was the worst kind of enemy to have. Dressed as a sheep but as deadly as an anaconda, the sting following the bite would cause and excruciating slow death coupled with treason no one would have suspected.

Walking out to the hallway, his eyes burning and throat aching from how viciously he clenched his jaw, he visited Laura’s room next.

The moment he walked inside the air turned oppressive; hostile; as though it was occupied by the resident whose body Derek had buried next to the home, strung with wolfsbane to ensure that nobody could get in or out. Nodding, in surrender and understanding, he felt his head subconsciously lower in submission. Laughable since Laura, his Alpha was dead, but when was Derek anything but idiotic?

He belonged to her, even in her demise he was still hers. She was all he had for so long, and all he would ever let himself have. To lose her, her body sliced to ensure there was no resurrection or even a chance of survival, was a curse he could never abscond from. Derek had broken his fingers with the ferocity of his anger. Let them heal. Then broke them again, punching until his knuckles glowed red.

Beacon Hills had induced her demise- he never should have let her go alone. He should have been a better brother, beta, and friend. When she voiced her suggestion to return, he should have fought harder to keep her rooted in New York, or perhaps joined her when she so clearly wanted him to come even if she refused to push. Why- why- _why_ was he a totem of doom? He should have died in the fire- he-

Laura was dead. Unhinging his jaw and feeling his gums throb, suspiciously wet and sweet, he let it go slack. Forcing his claws back into his hands, he felt the blood gush all over his palm. Her death was another to add to the list.

Like all the rooms hers was just as derelict, depression leaching the walls of all the memories that they had shared. The stolen moments where Derek had let her hug him, for both their sakes, let her interrogate him to no avail just to hear her voice and remember that she was pack and Kate could never steal pack from him. 

Seductive, gorgeous, and human Olivia was, but god he feared her. The omniscient way she spoke, the instructions phrased as suggestions, the never-ending interest she had on his family. The signs were there and so clear, how he had missed them he didn’t know. But all he knew was that he had just lost Paige, and Olivia suddenly appeared, a blessing of an angel. 

But she had never been an angel, not really. Not in the ways he lied to himself.

“You’ve been smelling sad for a long time, baby bro. But now, you leave the house scared and you come home almost empty. I just wish you’d tell me what’s wrong,” Laura had said once, both of them sharing a bed because Derek couldn’t sleep alone, he needed comfort and his sister was the only one who could help.

“I’m sorry,” he wished he could say, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

But instead, he faked slumber knowing that she was aware he was as conscious as she was. Her sigh that followed the silence was devastating.

When Laura found out: learnt the game that Derek had played and gotten lost in. Discovered how that tied into the Argent and the destruction of the Hale home and lineage, she went eerily still. Clutching the paper in her hand, staring blankly at the writing scrawled onto the sheet.

_Thanks for all the help, Derek. I couldn’t have done this without you. Next time we meet, I'll be sure to finish the job. Oh, and I thought you might like these. Your mother wasn’t going to need them where she was headed._

_Hugs and kisses, _

_K.A_

Claws. In the tub were his mother's claws, bloody around the cuticle because of how they had been ripped from her fingers and savagely rough, a declaration of how they had been sawed from his fingertips. He did this. Embarrassed her in her last moments, in front of the pack and hunters alike. 

In desperation, erratic self-loathing and unbearable anger, Derek tried to explain, “she told me her name was Olivia Presscot, I didn’t know. Laura, I didn’t-”

Grabbing the container and opening it slowly, as though the remnants may throw an inescapable hex, Laura peered into the tub to see the remains unrestrained by plastic. They still smelt like her. They still smelt like their mother. Snapping it shut, Laura swallowed.

“Is she the girl?” she intervened, the paper starting to crumple in her tense hold.

Derek’s face paled. “W-which girl?”

“The girl you always seemed to smell of and were terrified to meet. Is she the girl?” her voice was hard and stiff with ire, gradually going louder.

He couldn’t lie. She’d call him out immediately. It was time to confess his misdeeds. Would he get forgiven? Did he even deserve absolution? “Yes.” 

Swallowing a difficult breath, Derek watched Laura control her breathing and push aside the rage that Derek deserved to feel, and nod. Keeping the paper, she walked away, leaving him stood in their shared kitchen soaked to the bone in shame.

He didn’t understand why she left. Why she had disappeared to comprehend how her brother was a traitor in private, just to make sure she didn’t do anything she’d consider unjust. There was no punishment he didn't deserve, he thought to himself, he earned them all.

But that was an easy way out and he knew it. The bruises and hurt always faded, that much he learnt long before Kate and her infatuation with voltage and currents and _playing_ and- he didn’t even realise he was whimpering until he heard Laura’s footsteps cease. Immediately stopping, he inhaled a withering breath and hastily wiped his eyes, “such a sensitive, boy.”

Pushing aside his selfish suffering he went to their room, decaying in the sheets as he should, waiting for night to come so that he could ask for forgiveness, his wolf desperate to obtain some pardoning.

That night Laura never retired to the bed they shared, forcing Derek to confront the loneliness in ten folds and curl on the mattress, trying to absorb as much as himself as he could. She was going to leave, if she hadn’t already. Disown him for being the spawn of evil, a “silly boy” who couldn’t keep his eyes to himself or-

How long would it take for him to become nothing at all? For his heart to finally terminate like a fuse imploding and left for dead in the abandoned building. Not much longer he hoped. Laura’s anguish was something he didn’t have the strength to tackle. 

Especially not when he was the root cause of it all. 

But whilst he was crumpled on the bed, breathing heavy and terrified, stuck in a womb of abhorrence, Laura came to him. Rested a gentle hand on his head, the heat seeping through and melting the ice which was locking him in place.

“I’m not angry at you,” she whispered in the darkness of the room, voice angelic and soft. “But I am angry and sad and lost. Mom never got to finish her lessons and I. You’re still my baby brother, okay? You’re mine. My pack. She can’t take you away from me. I won’t let her.”

Sobbing into the mattress, his emotions unfolding at once and the web which existed for Kate Argent unspooling, he cried as hard as he could, Laura’s fingers carding through his hair as she let him break down. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve-

Pulling out of the memory, Derek blinked once. Then twice. The Hale house reappearing before him. The grave at the side of the burnt home suddenly felt like a throbbing wound which would never heal, only getting worse and worse. Infected, toxic, self-inflicted.

How much more could he lose at the hands of one person?

It seemed that everyone in the world was dangerous, out to destroy him and the Hales who had done nothing but peacefully exist. _Had he really peacefully existed, when he found an Alpha to bite Paige?_ But that was Pete- _That was all him_. 

Tearing himself out of Laura’s room, the memories slaughtering him too difficult to recollect, he left the upper story and reached the ground floor, breathing loud and heavy. Trying to compose his frantic inhales and exhales, he felt his claws extends once more and before they could pierce skin, he exposed them to their origin and punched the wall, satisfied at the immediate relief following the action.

Exhaling loudly, he closed his eyes and squeezed them before slamming his fist into the wall again, certain that he did something wrong when a deafening crack echoed in the room. Revealing the wasteland to his vision, he glanced at his hand and saw the pale complexion tainted blue in an overwhelming bruise. Resting it in his jacket once more, he told himself it would heal. They always did.

He was tired of exploring the ruins of the house, exhausted by the black lumber which wasn’t supposed to look like that, the smell of autumn which never have overwhelmed the scent of those once lived there, the house itself. It was as though he was staring at his own reflection, wandering the passages of his mind in hopes of finding refuge but locating melancholy in each and every room and corridor.

But he couldn’t leave. Not until he went to the one part of the home he never thought he’d ever have to visit again. The basement. 

Even though the scents had long gone, trudging down the stairs, the smell of his family surrounded him. Attacked his nose, destabilising him as he manoeuvred to boiling pot of melancholy. Confronting the suffering in the room would no doubt destroy him. Pausing, he wondered if he should continue the journey and finish it where Kate did. 

Was it worth the pain? The hurt he would fall into and drown? When would he call an end to the dejection? 

Glaring at the floor, because he couldn’t reach himself, he decided that as an elegy to those who died because of him, he had to do it. He would feel the torment for the days that came afterwards, but they weren't so lucky. They couldn’t feel anything anymore. For them, he decided, in and out.

Stepping onto the basement floor, his step heavy and thunderous, he inhaled quickly and exhaled, trying not to take in any fumes. He did anyway. Oak, spice, flowers, wood, and rain mixed with the natural elements. But above it all. Fire. 

A roaring inferno where death, destruction, Kate, and him: they all harboured in the flames and danced around the Hales, a performance orchestrated by the hunters and to be watched by the wolves. Mountain ash was missing, the house totally cleaned as per Sheriffs orders. But still, Derek felt it. The relentless force pushing him back, and it was almost as though he could hear them, but he couldn’t, not really. 

The whispers engraved in the walls where incomprehensible murmurs he could never deduce no matter how vigorously he studied them. Not that he wanted to. Why would he want to subject himself to the screams he missed hearing the day hell succumbed his family?

When he had reached there, running from school straight into a nightmare, he had run as far to the house as he could before the circle of mountain ash catapulted him away. Knocking the breath out of his lungs. Distantly, his ears not developed enough and his skills still perfecting as he was learning, he thought he could hear the cries of the humans and the wolves alike. 

All he yearned to do was take his claws and slash Kate’s throat with them. What was done could not be undone, but he needed revenge. A life for all the lives she took. Would it sate his thirst for vengeance? He didn’t need to do it to know that it wouldn’t. As long as he lived, there would always be anger simmering in his chest ready to expel. 

Never at himself, because he was too kind- too gentle- not enough detrimental. But life learned to punish him along the way, so he wasn’t exempt from the disarray that his idiocy started. Ambling to the centre of the room, blackness engulfing him completely and the fire all he could see eyes open or not, he wondered what it was.

What it was about wolves that tantalised her, what it was about him that let him fall into the palm of her hand and become a puppet, hers to manipulate. He always fell into things so fast, dived into them without considering the consequences or others for the matter, and all that proved for him was to be a problem. Yet he couldn’t change.

Wasn’t able to tear out of the wolfsbane bound restraints, at the mercy of his demons and the ones he had helped forge. They had all died in here, the basement, graves empty like the way they left Derek’s heart empty. This was the final decree, be the last remaining Hale to see the consequences of his stupidity and live it with no shoulders to lean against. With no one to live for.

The fire that had consumed this lower floor did not steal just their lives; it stole his too. There was a reason why he felt dead. Hollow. A toy for someone to play with and instantly discard. That’s all he ever was and would be, his fate fixed.

Turning his back to the wall he knew held their last memories, his gaze scurried the concrete floor, sharp and uncontrollable. The hole in his chest pulsated, inflicting him with convulsions that drowned him in sorrow and indescribable pain. _Physical _pain. 

Stomping out of the basement, because he didn’t know what he’d do if he stayed there any longer, he left the echo of the Hale house and stormed into the Camaro, driving away from the ruins of a home he destroyed. 

Perhaps he hadn’t chosen the right person all those years ago, blinded by his desolation and needing someone to make him whole again. All he did when he fell into Kate’s embrace was trade one sickness for another. One problem for a travesty. One death for multiple.

One life for none.


End file.
